Posts from ‘January, 2012’

Have you ever played Rock, Paper, Scissors? It's a simple game, but I've read that there is actually strategy involved in winning. The game consists of three gestures (weapons) — rock, represented by a clenched fist, paper, represented by an open hand, with the fingers extended and touching, and scissors, represented by two fingers extended and separated.

The object of the game is to select a gesture that defeats the opponent's. The winning gestures are as follows:

In my MLF102 classes this week, we are learning about reflexive verbs — verbs where the subject is doing something to itself. To get my students thinking about the name of this kind of verb, I ask them what they see when they look in the mirror. The answer, of course, is a reflection of themselves. In the picture on the right the cat sees itself, or in French, le chat se voit. But you've probably already noticed that the cat is seeing something else. I wonder how we see something different from what is actually in front of the mirror. I'm reminded of James 1:23 and 24 "For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like."

I've seen a series of ads lately where the people looking in the mirror see a younger version of themselves. Here are a couple I found online:

Over Christmas break, Becka and our grandson Drew watched an online video from Mister Rogers Neighborhood on PBS's site about how crayons are made. It's amazing to see how many steps are involved in the process. If you'd rather see a newer, shorter video on the process, you can view it on the How Stuff Works site. You need to scroll down halfway and, for whatever reason, you have to manually unmute the video. The videos reminded me of pictures in my files. After a bit of web researching, I came up with a lot of neat info.

This month the Chinese New Year begins on January 23. The Chinese have a twelve-year rotation, based on the Chinese zodiac. We will be entering the year of the Dragon. Below is a chart telling which animal corresponds to which year for quite a few years back (if you want to see what year you were born in) and more years yet to come.

It's been a while since I've done a blog post of funny signs. My readers have been keeping me supplied, though, so here are the funniest of the ones they've sent recently. It's a pretty random bunch of signs.

The owner of this Chinese restaurant has a good sense of humor ... or maybe not....

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a little about me…

My name is Rob Loach and I welcome you to my blog. People come here for an "instant vacation." You can learn more about me and about my instant vacations, including why my blog is called "ivman's blague," by visiting the about page, where you can watch my TV interview about my blog. My site is thirteen years old, so check out the tabs at the top of this page, subjects of interest to you in the tag cloud (below), and older blog posts (about 750 of them) not on the home page of the blog. Though I am posting less often than at first, there's still lots of archived humor here for you to enjoy!

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check out Nora’s amazing cookies

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radical rescue work

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We have enjoyed cheaper cell phone usage for almost 4 years now. I'm a Republic Wireless member and I absolutely love it. Join using my link (click on the picture below) and get $20 off your first bill.

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I post a lot of funny images to my blog. Most of them are sent to me by my readers. If the images come with copyright information, I leave that intact, of course. Otherwise I post them in good faith that they are copyright free. I invite any copyright owner to contact me if I have unwittingly infringed by posting the images as they have come to me.